


the currency of love

by fatalize



Series: Fruits Basket Childhood [1]
Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 03:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14740964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatalize/pseuds/fatalize
Summary: A drabble about Shigure's early childhood.First in a series of childhood drabbles, requested by an anon on tumblr.





	the currency of love

**Author's Note:**

> In some ways, this ended up being less of a "what was Shigure like as a kid?" drabble and more of a "what was Shigure like pre-Akito?" drabble. Because to me, I can't picture him as a ~typical kid~, haha. I imagine he's been kind of just who he is his whole life, so I was more interested in looking at a Shigure that existed before Akito became his raison d'être.
> 
> I originally wanted to publish Kyo's drabble first... but I'm still not satisfied with it yet, and Shigure's has been done for a while, so I figured I'd just go ahead and post it. While this is first in a series, I'm not planning some kind of chronological order, so if you're finding this later you can read them in any order you want. These fics are being published separately because 1) they have the same theme, but will likely be unrelated, and 2) if someone wants to find a fic for a certain character, I imagine it would be easier searching for a single fic (i.e. in a character tag) than one bogged down with a horde of tags.
> 
> But anyway, you clicked on this not to see me ramble but to read a fic, so without further ado, I present to you elementary age Shigure. (Exactly how old is he? I don't know. I was too lazy to look up how old he'd be when Ren first got pregnant. Roughly six, I guess.)

           Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, they say. Maybe they’re right, whoever they are; Shigure knew at least that the two emotions were similar in their intensity, and that true hatred may come from the betrayal of someone beloved.

           But if love and hate were the change you kept in your pocket, then they were precious things you used only on ones you felt deserved it. It was unwise to spend a coin on everyone—and most of the time Shigure didn’t see the profit to be found investing in this spending.

            Most of the time his pockets were empty and he had no coins to spare at all.

            Shigure liked his parents alright, but he didn’t love or hate them, and he found with most people it was the same. He wondered very, very briefly that maybe there was something wrong with him, that he couldn’t feel love or hate for anyone, simply floated along the waves of life like sea-smoothed driftwood. But there was no need to rock the boat on gentle seas, and no need for currency in the middle of the ocean, either.

            He was okay with it. It was an easy life.

            _How was school today?_

            “Same as always. It’s alright.”

            _That’s good to hear. You’re almost done with the last semester. Are you excited to move up a grade this spring?_

            “Yeah, I am.” Sure. Whatever answer pleased his parents.

            Then.

            “When I get to middle school, do you think I could go to a co-ed school?”

            _. . ._

            “If it’s a problem....”

            _We’re sorry, dear._

“It’s okay. I understand.”

            Shigure didn’t really care about going to a co-ed school all that much. He had no problems with the boys’ school he was currently in. He got along fine with his classmates, and Aya and Hatori were there. He had no interest in girls at the moment, and knew that mostly they would be a pain to deal with because of the circumstances of the zodiac. Furthermore, he knew suggesting a co-ed school would only make his parents uncomfortable.

            He just wanted to see what would happen if he said it, is all. See how they’d react. And, of course, they apologized without saying what they were really sorry for. Sorry, but who knows what could happen. Sorry, but it’s too dangerous for you in case a girl gets careless. Sorry, but it’ll reflect badly on us if you mess up and the secret gets out. Sorry, you were born like this and now we have to make compromises we wouldn’t have to otherwise.

            They couldn’t admit to any of those. How tiring, to tiptoe around politeness and niceties like that. It would be so much easier if they could just admit their thoughts.

            Aya was better at that.

            Aya would often be all over the Sohma estate, doing whatever, visiting Shigure or Hatori or bringing one along with him to visit the other. However they tended to exclusively group together—Kureno was only a year younger, but they never went out of their way to include him, and likewise, he never went out of his way to approach them.

            Which was fine by Shigure. The rest of the zodiac didn’t particularly interest him; so what, they had this thing in common. Was he supposed to like them? The dog, the snake, the dragon. The bird. There was the monkey, now, too. There were whispers among the adults, everyone from his parents to the maids, about how _interesting_ it was that almost half of the zodiac had appeared in a relatively small span of time.

            _This hasn’t happened in quite a while. Do you think it’s possible…?_

            As if he couldn’t hear them.

            _I suppose we’ll have to wait and see._

            Because he was a child. Of course he could hear everything they were saying.

            _Did you know, Akira-sama…_

            Shigure left in search of Aya, needing some relief from the tedium of inner-Sohma matters—needed someone who also didn’t care about the complicated world the adults had obsessed themselves with.

            Shigure spent most of his days like this, floating along carelessly.

* * *

            But then the dream happened.

            One of the only dreams he could remember, shocked by the immediate impact he felt, quick as lightning and just as powerful—the fact that it was branded into his eyelids even after he woke up, his body reverberating with this dream, dream, dream—

            But it wasn’t just a dream, it was real. The most real thing he’d ever felt, and it wasn’t just a fantasy—all he had to do was go to Ren and he’d be able to confirm it.

            And so he sat there in his bed, his heart torn open, a coin now dropped in the slot of his chest. Like some kind of slot machine, the mechanisms in his chest started moving now, churning emotions foreign to him, inexplicable, intense.

            And then tears, of gold and silver and copper, flooding out of him like an endless supply of riches, providing him with emotional funds now that he found something worth investing in.


End file.
